The night Johnny Ace died in the City Auditorium - Bayou City History Bayou City History The night Johnny Ace died in the City Auditorium By J.R. Gonzales on December 25, 2013 at 12:05 AM Old City Auditorium, site of Jones Hall today. Dry your eyes, no tears, no sorrow. Cling to me with all your might, And never let me go. — “Never Let Me Go” by Johnny Ace More than 2,000 people had gathered at the old City Auditorium on Dec. 25, 1954, for the dance. It being Christmas night and all, it was probably a pretty festive occasion. On the bill that evening was one John Marshall Alexander Jr., better known as R&B crooner Johnny Ace. The Memphis-based pianist cut his teeth in a band with B.B. King in the early days. As King’s star rose and provided new opportunities, Johnny took over the band and soon amassed a string of R&B hits in the early 1950s. Johnny was a familiar sight in Houston’s R&B scene back then.

In 1952, Don Robey, founder of Houston-based Peacock Records, acquired Memphis’ Duke Records, which had signed Johnny. In Down in Houston: Bayou City Blues, Roger Wood noted: “The synthesis achieved via this commercially triggered dialectic of performers from the Delta and the Lone Star state resulted in some of the most potent blues, and especially rhythm and blues, of the fifties and sixties — including the first major R&B ‘crossover’ star, Johnny Ace.” According to the Houston Post, Johnny had finished his set with Yes, Baby and retired to the City Auditorium dressing room. Some drinking ensued and, according to newspaper accounts, Johnny started playing a game of Russian roulette with a .22 caliber revolver. (Some say Johnny used a different caliber weapon that night.) Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton wasn’t having any of it, the Houston Chronicle reported. She took the gun and removed the bullet. Johnny demanded she put the bullet back in the gun and give it back. Thornton relented but told him to put the gun away. Nothing will happen, Johnny said.

To prove it, he cocked the gun, put it to the temple of 22-year-old Olivia Gibbs, and pulled the trigger, the Chronicle reported. Click. He spun the cylinder again, put it to his temple and pulled the trigger. The ensuing blast instantly killed the 25-year-old. Even though the local papers blamed his death on a game of Russian roulette, other accounts — on Wikipedia for example — say Johnny believed the weapon wasn’t loaded. Nonetheless, though his life was cut short that night, Johnny’s music legacy continued through posthumous releases. That music would inspire a class of musicians who would shape rock ‘n’ roll in the 1960s and 1970s. One was Paul Simon, who referenced Johnny’s story in the 1983 recording, The Late Great Johnny Ace. More recently, Dave Alvin kept the story alive in 2011’s Johnny Ace is Dead. If you’re having trouble placing any of his music, one posthumous hit, Pledging My Love, can be heard in the film Christine. You can hear it in this playlist here . The incident garnered a brief mention on the front page of the next day’s Houston Post.

The Chronicle had a longer story inside its editions. Both accounts can be found via this link . The Houston Press didn’t appear to mention it in its final editions in the days after the shooting. J.R. Gonzales Johnny Ace’s Biography — Free listening, videos, concerts, stats and photos at Last.fm Listeners Biography Johnny Ace (June 9, 1929 – December 25, 1954), born John Marshall Alexander, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of a preacher. He was one of the stars of U.S. rhythm and blues singing. Career After serving in the navy during WWII, Alexander joined Adolph Duncan's Band as a pianist. He then joined the B. B. King band. Soon King departed for Los Angeles and Bobby Bland joined the army. Alexander took over vocal duties and renamed the band The Beale Streeters, also taking over King's WDIA radio show. Becoming "Johnny Ace", he signed to Duke Records (originally a Memphis label associated with WDIA) in 1952 . My Song, his first recording, topped the R&B charts for 9 weeks in September.

(My Song was covered in 1968 by Aretha Franklin.) Ace began heavy touring, often with Willa Mae "Big Mama" Thornton. In the next two years, he had eight hits in a row, including "Cross My Heart," "Please Forgive Me," "The Clock," "Yes, Baby." and "Never Let Me Go." In December, 1954 he was named the Most Programmed Artist Of 1954 after a national DJ poll organized by U.S. trade weekly Cash Box. Ace's recordings sold very well for those times. Early in 1955, Duke Records announced that the three 1954 Johnny Ace recordings, along with Thornton's "Hound Dog", had sold more than 1,750,000 records. Death After touring for a year, Ace had been performing at the City Auditorium in Houston, Texas on Christmas 1954. During a break between sets, a drunken Ace allegedly decided to play a game of Russian Roulette. He aimed a .45 caliber revolver at his girlfriend, Olivia Gibbs, and pulled the trigger. He then attempted to shoot her friend, Mary Carter.

Both times, the hammer fell on an empty chamber. He then swiftly turned the gun on himself and ended his life. The official story has always been that Ace killed himself playing Russian roulette, but there have been rumors that Johnny Ace was murdered by Don D. Robey. The only official witnesses were record company owner Don D. Robey, who Ace had been trying to renegotiate his contract with, and singer Big Mama Thornton. Both Robey and Thornton testified that Ace killed himself; both went to their graves without ever changing their story — and without convincing many insiders that Johnny hadn't been murdered. Big Mama Thorton in a written statement (included in the book The Late Great Johnny Ace) said during the investigation that Ace had been playing with the gun, but not playing Russian Roulette. According to Thornton, Ace pointed the gun at his girlfriend and another woman who were sitting nearby, but did not fire. He then pointed the gun toward himself. The gun went off, shooting him in the side of the head. Ace's January 2, 1955 funeral at Memphis' Clayborn Temple AME church was attended by an estimated 5000 people.

Tributes Paul Simon wrote a song called "The Late Great Johnny Ace" (on his Hearts and Bones album) that references Johnny Ace's death as well as John Lennon's and John Kennedy's. He performed the song solo during a reunion concert with Art Garfunkel in Central Park in 1981. A fan rushed the stage during the song and was quickly arrested. Simon then completed the song. The incident was shown on the concert video on HBO, but the song was excluded from the live album from that concert. Rock band Dash Rip Rock has written, recorded & released a song named "Johnny Ace" which tells the story of Johnny Ace's life and death. Will Oldham (as Palace Music) released a 45 "Gezundeit/Let the Wires Ring" in 1995, "Let the wires ring" last verse mentions Johnny Ace's death.

"Next wave wash your pretty face/ And keep in mind that Johnny Ace/ Was drunk, was fucked, was not on stage/ When he made that silly move he made/ And only after once dead we/ Adore him more, adore that money/ After when his corpse was cool/ That ugly memorable fool/ Who shot the Christmas spirit down/ And lit a fame, that half-made clown." Johnny Ace | Biography, Albums, Streaming Links | AllMusic June 9, 1929 in Memphis, TN Died December 25, 1954 in Houston, TX Genre Rule Forty Two - » Did Johnny Ace really shoot himself? Blog Archives Did Johnny Ace really shoot himself? Ace, famous for his smooth baritone and the single “Pledging My Love,” was a popular ballad singer in the early ’50s, and routinely jammed on piano with B.B. King. On Christmas Day, 1954, he died of a gunshot wound backstage at Houston’s City Auditorium between sets of a show with Big Mama Thornton. The coroner’s verdict was Russian roulette, but some people speculate that Ace was shot by Don Robey, owner of Duke Records, in an effort to end contract renegotiations.

(Robey was a music-world thug who was known for pulling guns during business transactions.) The more likely story, corroborated by several eyewitnesses: although Ace wasn’t playing Russian roulette, he was horsing around with his own gun and accidentally shot himself–or as a Houston homicide detective on the scene that night put it, he died of “pistolitis.” (Excerpted from the 2006 book Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton’s Little John?: Music’s Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed, published by Three Rivers Press, written by Gavin Edwards.) Ace, Johnny 1929–1954 - Dictionary definition of Ace, Johnny 1929–1954 | Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary Ace, Johnny 1929–1954 Sources The short but highly influential career of rhythm-and-blues vocalist Johnny Ace came to an end on Christmas Day of 1954, when the singer lost a round of Russian roulette. Already a fixture of African-American concert stages, Ace, had he lived, might have reached the crossover pop success eventually achieved by the artists of the Motown Records stable.

Ace’s slender output left a big stylistic footprint: he paved the way for a succession rhythm-and-blues crooners extending all the way down to the present day, and he arguably shaped the vocal style of the young Elvis Presley , who recorded his own version of Ace’s biggest hit, “Pledging My Love.” The son of a circuit-riding Baptist preacher and sometime laborer, Johnny Ace was born John Marshall Alexander, Jr. in Memphis on June 9, 1929. He was one of 11 children. Ace went to school on Memphis’s south side, sang in a church choir, and learned to play the piano—but only in the gospel style, for secular music was forbidden in the Alexander household. Ace’s mother Leslie laid down strict rules but doted on Johnny, who showed signs of unusual talent. With her financial support, Ace took music and art lessons as a young man. His education, and his harmonious relationship with his parents, came to an end when he dropped out of Booker T. Washington High School and joined the U.S. Navy in his junior year of high school. Going AWOL more often than not, Ace was soon discharged from the Navy.

He bounced around, did a short prison term in Mississippi , and found himself back in Memphis in 1949. Circulating through the city’s extraordinarily fertile music scene, which in the years after World War II featured such artists as B. B. King, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and Junior Parker, Ace held his own. He gravitated toward the Beale Street area, for decades the nerve center of urban Southern blues, and joined with Bland, Parker, and other musicians in a band first called the Beale Street Blues Boys and later the Beale Streeters. Ace played piano in that band, which sometimes backed King in the early years of that blues superstar’s career. But as the Beale Streeters gained experience and began touring Tennessee ’s black nightclub circuit, Ace emerged as a fine vocal stylist in his own right. A graceful baritone, he was influenced musically not so much by King’s high-intensity sound as by the mellow, conversational style of West Coast bluesman Charles Brown. Ace was a multitalented musician who played piano, sang, and wrote songs. In each of these areas he began to forge a new pop-inflected style.

His singing was mellow, perfectly set off by his good looks and relaxed charm; his compositions were less often blues than 32-bar popular song-form numbers. During this point in his life, however, Ace’s personal life was in disarray. He had married ninth-grader Lois Jean Palmer and fathered a son by her; mother and child were installed in Ace’s parents’ house, but Ace himself was not permitted to stay there. Despite these problems, his musical career was ready to take off. His breakthrough came in 1952, when the program director of the pioneering all-rhythm-and-blues Memphis radio station WDIA launched his own label, Duke, and planned to record and release a single featuring Bobby “Blue” Bland on vocals. Bland botched the performance, At a Glance… Born John Marshall Alexander on June 9, 1929, in Memphis, TN; son of Rev. and Mrs. John Alexander; married Lois Jean Palmer; children: one son; died December 25, 1954. Career: Performed with the Beale Streeters, a band that toured and backed B. B.

King, late 1940s and early 1950s; signed to Duke label, 1952; given name Johnny Ace by Duke label as part of band name Johnny Ace with the New Blues Sound; placed eight singles in rhythm-and-blues top ten, 1952-54; heavy touring schedule of up to 350 performances a year by 1954; single “Pledging My Love” posthumously topped rhythm-and-blues chart and rose to pop top 20, 1955. and Ace was called on to replace him. Quickly cobbling together a melody of his own, Ace recorded the romantic ballad “My Song” and it became a regional hit. It was at that point that John Alexander became “Johnny Ace with the New Blues Sound.” Thanks largely to the success of “My Song,” the Duke label was acquired by Houston , Texas , entrepreneur Don Robey. One of the first African-American producers in popular music, Robey was a pioneering but controversial figure who envisioned national distribution and stardom for Ace and the other artists under his charge, including “Hound Dog” blueswoman Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton.

Much as Detroit producer Berry Gordy would do a decade later with the artists of the Motown label, Robey forged a new and sophisticated image for Ace. Also like Gordy, Robey later faced charges that he had deprived artists of monies that were rightfully theirs. But the presentation he created fit well with Ace’s smooth romantic vocals, and the combination brought out throngs of female fans to Ace’s concerts. The road became Ace’s only real home; by 1954 he was performing a grueling schedule of about 350 concerts a year. The pressures began to show. Houston guitarist Milton Hopkins, a member of Ace’s band, remembered, as quoted in the Houston Chronicle, that “Johnny’s idea of fun was driving his Oldsmobile 90 miles per hour, his pistol in his hand, shooting out the zeros on the roadside speed-limit signs.” But Ace, still in his early twenties, had plenty of energy, and his success continued to build. With his recording career expertly managed by the fast-talking Robey, Ace notched eight top-ten rhythm-and-blues hits between 1952 and 1955.

Among those hits were the chart-topping “The Clock” (1953), “Saving My Love for You” (1953), and “Never Let Me Go” (1954), which featured accompaniment from vibraharpist Johnny Otis and evoked another major influence on Ace’s style—jazz vocalist Billy Eckstine. Eckstine at the time was one of a very few black singers who had broken the racial taboos of the early 1950s and succeeded in selling romantic-themed music to white record buyers, and now it seemed that Ace, with a suave, highly slow-danceable song called “Pledging My Love,” might accomplish the same feat. He would do so, but only posthumously. On Christmas Day of 1954, at the intermission of a concert at Houston’s City Auditorium, Ace tried to impress Thornton and the other singers present by playing a round of Russian roulette—spinning the barrel of a pistol with only one bullet-filled chamber and then firing it at himself.

He was killed; although rumors that he was murdered circulated in the years after his death, both police at the scene and later biographers have accepted the Russian-roulette scenario. “Pledging My Love” not only topped rhythm-and-blues charts but rose into the pop top 20. One more song Ace had already recorded, “Anymore,” likewise became a hit; it was later featured on the soundtrack of the 1998 film Eve’s Bayou. Elvis Presley’s version of “Pledging My Love” became one of his many hits to appropriate African-American material, and other artists, including Aretha Franklin, also covered selections from Ace’s short list of recordings. Tribute to Johnny Ace, Duke, 1955. The Johnny Ace Memorial Album, MCA, 1974. Pledging My Love, MCA, 1986. Books Hitchcock, H. Wiley, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, Macmillan, 1985. Romanowski, Patricia, and Holly George-Warren, eds., The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, Fireside, 1995.

Salem, James M., The Late, Great Johnny Ace and the Transition from R & B to Rock’n’ Roll, University of Illinois Press, 1999. St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, St. James, 2000. Tosches, Nick, Unsung Heroes of Rock ’n’ Roll, rev. ed., Harmony Books, 1991. Periodicals African American Review, Summer 2001, p. 322. Houston Chronicle, November 28, 1999, p. Zest-23. On-Line Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. MLA Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list.

Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Therefore, it’s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication’s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: Modern Language Association Johnny Ace Songs, Music, and History "Don't You Know" "So Lonely" Where you might have heard him "Pledging My Love" remains the epitome of '50s R&B balladry, a slow dance number unmatched in its era, which is why it's often used in period pieces and films as diverse as Back to the Future, Christine, and Mean Streets.

You'd have to go searching for his other stuff, however -- but if you like "Pledging My Love," there's plenty more where that came from Born John Marshall Alexander on June 9, 1929, Memphis, TN; died December 25, 1954, Houston, TX continue reading below our video Top 5 Grossing Movies of All Time Styles '50s R&B, Jump blues , Boogie-woogie Instruments Vocals, piano, organ Rock's first tragedy A smooth balladeer who influenced countless R&B tenors His mix of Memphis blues and West Coast polish laid the groundwork for the emergence of rock and roll An urban bluesman and pianist who mastered several of the genre's styles Inspired countless tributes and homages The history of Johnny Ace Early years The boy who would become Johnny Ace was a restless one, enthralled by Memphis' thriving blues and R&B scene but forbidden to play or even hear secular music by his minister father. Johnny dropped out of high school and joined the Navy, then was dishonorably discharged after sneaking out to play piano in local bars. Now back on the streets, the young singer joined the backing group of a rising star named B.B.

King; when King's new manager insisted he be signed without a band, Johnny took it over, renamed it the Beale Streeters after Memphis' famous musical strip, and made quite a bit of noise around town. When local Duke Records signed one of the Streeters, Bobby "Blue" Bland, he showed up too drunk to perform, and label head David Mattis became intrigued with Johnny after hearing him fooling around with a Ruth Brown hit called "So Long." Success Mattis wanted an original song, however, so Johnny took the Ruth hit and changed it just enough to make it his own: now called "My Song," and with a label proclaiming the artist as "Johnny Ace," it shot straight to #1 R&B and stayed there for two solid months. In fact, Ace was one of the most popular black artists of the next few years -- every song charted, which was a rarity in itself for the time, and he moved millions of 45s. His urbane yet passionate style, a sort of pop croon adapted to a slick West Coast kind of blues balladry, proved enormously popular, although as a pianist, he could and often did explore boogie-woogie and jump blues on his b-sides.

Death However, just as Johnny was primed to take his place in rock and roll's early mid-50s pantheon, he accidentally ended his life: on Christmas night, 1954, Ace was showing off his pistol backstage at a concert in Houston. Much as would later happen with Chicago's Terry Kath, he put the gun to his head to prove it wasn't loaded, and promptly killed himself with one shot. Scandal sheets of the time erroneously claimed Ace had been playing Russian Roulette, and the error was picked up by the national media, starting a rumor that still unfortunately persists today. More important was the effect of his death: for the first time, several artists recorded "tribute records," and Duke assembled a "memorial album" of his few sides that proved so popular it was still selling in record stores 30 years later.

More about Johnny Ace Johnny Ace awards and honors Beach Music Hall of Fame (2001) Fun facts and trivia about Johnny Ace: Rosco Gordon and Earl Forest were both members of the Beale Streeters Was friends with legendary blues diva Big Mama Thornton, who sadly was present during his accidental death Johnny Otis produced most of Ace's Duke sides, and his band can be heard on "Pledging My Love" Ace had just purchased a brand-new car the day of his death, further debunking "suicide" rumors Paul Simon famously wrote a tribute song, "The Late Great Johnny Ace," which links memories of his death with John Lennon's Duke Robey, who distributed Duke through his own Peacock label, passed off a singer as Johnny's "brother Buddy" for decades afterward A 12-year-old Lou Reed wore a black armband all day when he heard of Ace's death Johnny Ace songs, hits.

and albums #1 hits R&B "My Song" (1952), "The Clock" (1953), "Pledging My Love" (1955) Top 10 hits R&B "Cross My Heart" (1953), "Saving My Love for You" (1954), "Please Forgive Me" (1954), "Never Let Me Go" (1954), "Anymore" (1955) Notable covers Swamp-poppers tend to love "Pledging My Love," which is why it's been covered by Elvis Presley, Aaron Neville, Van Broussard, and Jerry Lee Lewis have all recorded versions of it. But only pop singer Teresa Brewer of "Music! Music! Music!" fame took it to the Top 40, not coincidentally just a few months after Ace's death.

"Never Let Me Go," however, remains the most popular of his R&B originals, covered by Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Ruth Brown, and Luther Vandross The Death of Johnny Ace: Steve Bergsman: 9780987689788: Amazon.com: Books The Death of Johnny Ace Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1 This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. Next Special Offers and Product Promotions Editorial Reviews Review He (Bergsman) does, in fact, give us a good feel for the growing tension between hustler Robey and his restless young charge, and as a cautionary parable about the pitfalls and predations of the music industry. - David Whiteis, Living Blues magazine Although Bergsman said that no one really knows what happened backstage the night Ace died, he said he believes he solved the mystery of Ace's death, at least in his mind. He died just at the tip of rock 'n' roll music taking off.

Johnny Ace is the most forgotten rock 'n' Roll pioneer, and Bergsman thinks the guy belongs in the Rock'N'Roll Hall of Fame. Maybe if the powers-to-be at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland read Bergsman's book, Johnny Ace will be. - Mike Sakal, East Valley Tribune Author Steve Bergsman's book, Growing Up Levittown, was published last year as a memoir surrounding his controversial teenage years in the Long Island suburb. Bergsman took a different route in the creation of his first novel, The Death of Johnny Ace. The book is a fictional piece highlighting the career of an American rhythm and blues artist that ended suddenly and all too soon after an accidental suicide. - Nicole Murphy, Levittown Patch Read more About the Author Steve Bergsman has contributed to a wide range of magazines, newspapers and wire services for more than twenty-five years, including New York Times, Wall Street Journal Sunday, Phoenix Magazine, Oldies, Chief Executive, The Australian, Creator’s Syndicate, Reuters News Service, Inman News and Copley News Service.

He has been a regular contributor to the “Ground Floor” real estate column in Barron’s and has written for all of the leading real estate industry publications, including National Real Estate Investor, Institutional Real Estate Letter, Retail Traffic, Lodging, Multifamily Trends, Real Estate Portfolio, Shopping Center World, Mortgage Banking and Urban Land. His books include After the Fall: Opportunities and Strategies for Real Estate Investing in the Coming Decade, Maverick Real Estate Financing: The Art of Raising Capital and Owning Properties Like Ross, Sanders and Carey, Maverick Real Estate Investing: The Art of Buying and Selling Properties Like Trump, Zell, Simon, the World’s Greatest Land Owners, Passport to Exotic Real Estate: Buying U.S. And Foreign Property In Breath-Taking, Beautiful, Faraway Lands, and Growing Up Levittown: In a Time of Conformity, Controversy and Cultural Crises. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition. Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here , or download a FREE Kindle Reading App . Ignite your imagination with these editor's picks from Kindle books.

See more Product Details Publisher: Dancing Traveller Publishing (October 15, 2012) Language: English Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.5 x 9 inches Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces By voiceactor on April 14, 2013 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase The Death of Johnny Ace is overall a fun read. As a "fictional" account of real people and real incidents, ie the circumstances surrounding Johnny's suicide and the main players, it was an enjoyable interactive experience. Interactive, because I found myself spending as much time fact checking as reading. The research activity was not at all unpleasant. In the end, though, I was still left confused and wanting to know what was truth and what was fiction. Bergsman has correctly reported the broad general facts surrounding Ace, Don Robey, and the other participants in the Memphis and Houston music scene. He then skillfully creates a plot and dialogue that is very believable. Then things get confusing as he takes liberties that don't need to be taken. For example creating a scenario where Big Mama Thornton is on stage when Ace dies, rather than in his dressing room with him.

Don Robey was a larger than life character in black entertainment history and it sounds like so was Johnny Ace if we can rely on Bergsman's protrayal. With Bergsman's obvious knowledge of the time and characters, I would like to have finished the book knowing that I had read an actual historical account as opposed to a quasi-fictional one. Finally, I have a few nits to pick with the misspellings and inaccuracies in a couple of obvious places. Example "...King...heard almost every 78-inch recording that had been made." And when talking about radio station WDIA, "In the center of the record station sat a small room..." There are a few more but as an ex dj and 78 rpm record collector, those were the two that had me flinch. All that said, I liked Bergsmans style, I enjoyed his premise and I had fun reading this book. Mostly I appreciate him bringing more attention to Johnny Ace, Don Robey and the early days of WDIA and Duke Records. By The Foyle on August 31, 2014 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase What a wonderful surprise this book was.

I looked at other works by the author and was somewhat skeptical as to whether I'd like the book as this seemed to be his first foray into the musical world, let alone a book about an early R&B pioneer, but this book was a joy. The author dug deeply into the world of Johnny Ace, combining facts with some fiction, coming up with an extremely enjoyable read for me. I personally love every aspect of the birth of R&B and R&R so I was very familiar with Johnny Ace. Whether this book would appeal to someone totally unfamiliar with Johnny Ace is a question, but the plot of the story is a good one on it's own, and that might suffice. Sprinkled with names of his contemporaries such as B.B. King and Bobby "Blue" Bland and the behind the scenes shadiness of the music business owners, including one of the most famous, Duke Records owner Don Robey, the book is excellent. DG By Leslie R.

Forster on December 15, 2012 Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase Neatly wrapped around the fast paced life of Johnny Ace, a real pioneer of Rock and Roll whose life was cut short, this fact filled novel reveals the role Memphis had in the growth and development of this special genre of music during the early fifties. The book takes the reader on a nostalgic journey with glimpses into the lives of musical greats such as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, and many more. The Death of Johnny Ace also provides a good look at what it was like to live as an African American in the south during that era, giving an appreciation for how far our country has come yet how far we still have to go. Although there was never a doubt that Johnny shot himself, it was never disclosed if the act was intentional or accidental. The author offers a very possible series of events that leads to a surprising ending. By Book worm 2 on November 7, 2012 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase If you're looking for a book that you can't put down, yet when you do it stays with you...this is the one.

I didn't know who Johnny Ace was, but after reading this book I found myself going on you tube to hear his soulful voice. Steve Bergsman's talent lies in his wonderful descriptions that pulls you in, makes you feel you are right there. I didn't want the book to end. I wanted to stay with BB King, and all the artists Mr. Bergman entwines around Johnny Ace as he becomes famous. I couldn't wait to find out what happened to Johnny Ace. I highly recommend you read this book, you won't be let down. Excellent writer, excellent story teller. I am anxious for his next book. Five star read. By Timothy Thomas on January 25, 2013 Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase I read a positive review of Steve Bergsman's book and his interest in 50âs music in The Arizona Republic newspaper. The Death of Jonny Ace gives an entertaining account of the Memphis music scene in the late forties which included BB King, Bobbie Blue Bland and Big Mama Thorton. It enlightened my on the issues African American artist faced getting their music exposed to a national audience.

It also provides insight on Don Robey, a record label executive and producer who makes Berry Gordy of Motown look like a saint. Steve tells a great story about an artist who died right at the beginning of Rock and Roll. If you love music, this books a must read. The Night Johnny Ace Died The 25 Best Movies of 2016 The Night Johnny Ace Died Life is hard in the honky-tonk. If the booze or the peckerwoods don't get you, there's still The Gin Fizz Kitty from Texas City. Most Popular By James Lee Burke Mar 8, 2007 He and Big Mama Thornton were taking a break backstage when it happened. The dance floor was covered with Mexican and black people, a big haze of cigarette and reefer smoke floating over their heads in the spotlights. White people were up in the balcony, mostly low-rider badasses wearing pegged drapes and needle-nose stomps and girls who could do the dirty bop and manage to look bored while they put your flopper on autopilot. Then we heard it, one shot, pow, like a small firecracker.

Johnny's dressing-room door was partly opened and I swear I saw blood fly across the wall, just before people started running in all directions. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Everyone said he had been showing off with a .22, spinning the cylinder, snapping the hammer on what should have been an empty chamber. But R&B and rock 'n' roll could be a dirty business back then, get my drift? Most of the musicians, white and black, were right out of the cotton field or the Assembly of God church. The promoters and the record-company executives were not. Guess whose names always ended up on the song credits, regardless of who wrote the song? Most Popular But no matter how you cut it, on Christmas night, 1954, Johnny Ace joined the Hallelujah Chorus and Eddy Ray Holland and I lost our chance to be the rockabillies who integrated R&B. Johnny had promised to let our band back him when he sang "Pledging My Love." In those days, Houston wasn't exactly on the cutting edge of the civil-rights movement. We might have gotten lynched, but it would have been worth it.

Listen to "Pledging My Love" sometime and tell me you wouldn't chuck your box in the suburbs and push your boss off a roof to be seventeen and hanging out at the drive-in again. Nineteen fifty-four was the same year we met the kid from Mississippi Eddy Ray used to call the Greaser because that boogie haircut of his looked like it had been hosed down with 3-in-One oil. But teenage girls went apeshit when the Greaser came onstage at the Louisiana Hayride, throwing their panties at him, crushing the roof of his Caddy to get into his hotel room, tearing out each other's hair over one of his socks. "I think the guy is a spastic. It's not an act," Eddy Ray said. "The Greaser played on Beale Street with Furry Lewis and Ike Turner. Give the guy some credit." "Shut up, R. B.," Eddy Ray said. I didn't argue. I knew Eddy Ray didn't carry grudges or envy people. Things just weren't going well for our band, that's all. The beer-joint circuit was full of guys like us, most of them talented and not in it for the money, either.

On average, the total pay wasn't more than fifty bucks a gig. We lived on Vienna sausage, saltine crackers, and Royal Crown colas, and brushed our teeth and took our baths in gas-station lavatories. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Eddy Ray was the big difference with our group. He played boogie-woogie and blues piano and a Martin acoustic guitar and could make oil-field workers wipe their eyes when he sang "The Wild Side of Life." Girls dug him, too. Eddy Ray still heard bugles blowing in the hills south of the Yalu River, where he got grabbed and spent over two years at a prisoner-of-war camp in a place called No Name Valley. He always said four hundred of our soldiers got moved up into Red China, where they were used in medical experiments. I was at the Chosin Reservoir, too, and I could tell when he was thinking about it because the skin around his left eye would twitch like a bumblebee was fixing to light on it. So why would a stand-up guy like Eddy Ray be bothered by a kid from Tupelo, Mississippi?

Remember when I mentioned the gals who could start your flopper flipping around in your slacks like it has a brain of its own? This one's nickname was the Gin Fizz Kitty from Texas City. She had gold hair, cherry lipstick, and blue eyes that could look straight up into yours like you were the only guy on the planet. When Eddy Ray and I first saw her, she was singing at a roadhouse called Buster's in Vinton, Louisiana. The heat had started to go out of the day, and through the screens we could see a lake and, beyond it, a red sun shining through a grove of live oaks. We were at the bar, drinking long-neck Jax, eating crab burgers, the big-bladed window fan blowing cool in our faces. Eddy Ray's attention was fixed on the girl at the microphone and the way her purple cowboy shirt puffed and dented and changed colors in the breeze from the floor fan, the way she closed her eyes when she opened her mouth to sing, like she was offering up a prayer. "What a voice," he said. "I'm going to ask her over." "I think I've seen her before, Eddy Ray," I said.

"Where?" "At the Piggly Wiggly in Beaumont," I said. I looked at his expression, the sincerity in it, and wanted to kick myself. She didn't drink beer, she said. She drank gin fizzes. And it all went on her tab, which told me she had a special relationship with the owner. When Eddy Ray went to the can, she smiled sweetly and asked, "You got some reason for staring at me, R. B.? Advertisement - Continue Reading Below I know you from somewhere?" I replied, my face as blank as a shingle, "No, ma'am, I don't think so." "If you got a haircut and tucked in your shirt and pulled up your britches, you'd be right handsome. But don't stare at people. It's impolite." "I won't, I promise," I said, and wondered what we were fixing to get into. One week after Johnny Ace capped himself (or had somebody do it for him), we were blowing down the road in Eddy Ray's '49 Hudson, headed toward our next gig, a town up in Arkansas so small, it was located between two Burma-Shave signs.

Kitty Lamar lay down in the backseat, airing her bare feet, with the toenails painted red, out the window. She was popping bubble gum and reading a book on, get this, French existentialism, and commenting on it while she turned the pages. Then, out of nowhere, she lowered her book, looked at me, and said, Most Popular "I wish you'd stop giving me them strange looks, R. B." "Excuse me," I said. "What's with you two?" Eddy Ray said, one hand on the wheel, a deck of Lucky Strikes wrapped in the sleeve of his T-shirt. I didn't say diddly-squat to Eddy Ray. But, man, was it eating my lunch. The previous night at the motel, I'd heard her talking on the phone to the Greaser. It was obvious to me Kitty Lamar and the Greaser had known each other for some time, and I'm talking about in the biblical sense. Eddy Ray had evidently decided to let bygones be bygones, but in my opinion she kept doing things that were highly suspicious.

For example again, she loved fried oysters and catfish po'boy sandwiches, but when we'd be playing a gig around Memphis, she wouldn't touch a fish or shrimp or oyster dinner with a dung fork. Why is this significant? The Greaser was notorious for not allowing his punch of the day to eat anything that smelled of fish. Is that sick or what? "Why don't we stop at that seafood joint up the road yonder and tank down a few deep-fried catfish sandwiches?" I said. "I know Kitty Lamar would dearly appreciate one." She gave me a look that would scald the paint off a battleship. "It doesn't matter to me one way or another, because I don't eat seafood this far inland," she said, her nose pointed in her book. "Why is that, Kitty Lamar?" I asked, turning around in the seat. "Because that's how you get ptomaine poisoning. Most people who went past the eighth grade know that. Have you ever applied for a public-library card, R. B.? When we get back to Houston, I'll show you how to fill out the form." "Am I the only sane person in this car?" Eddy Ray said.

You know the secret to being a rockabilly or countrymusic celebrity? It's not just the sequins on your clothes and the needle-nose, mirror-shined boots. Your music has to be full of sorrow, I mean just like the blood-flecked broken body of Jesus on the cross. When people go to the Assembly of God church and look up at that cross, the pain they see there isn't in Jesus' body; it's in their own lives. I'm talking about droughts, dust storms, mine blowouts, black-lung disease, or pulling cotton bolls or breaking corn till the tips of their fingers bleed. I went to school with kids who wore clothes sewn from Purina feed sacks. Eddy Ray was one of them. What I'm trying to say is, we come from a class of people who think of misery as a given. They just want somebody who's had a degree of success to treat them with respect. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below We'd all been in the dumps since Johnny died, me more than anybody, although I couldn't tell you exactly why. In fact, I felt sick thinking about it.

I'd look over at the Gin Fizz Kitty from Texas City and hear that peckerwood accent, which sounded like somebody pulling a strand of baling wire through a tiny hole in a tin can, and I'd flat want to lie down on the highway and let a hog truck run over my head. A group of Yankees by the name of Bill Haley and His Comets were calling themselves the founders of rock 'n' roll, and we were playing towns where families in need of excitement drove out on the highway to look at the new Coca-Cola billboard. And Johnny was dead, and maybe not by his own hand, and his friends had gotten a whole lot of gone between him and them. But that night we didn't take a break for two hours. When Eddy Ray ripped out Albert Ammons's "Swanee River Boogie" on the piano, the place went zonk. Then we kicked it up into E-major overdrive with Hank's "Lovesick Blues" and Red Foley's "Tennessee Saturday Night," Eddy Ray and Kitty Lamar sharing the vocals. I got to admit it, the voices of those two could have started a new religion.

The snow stopped and a big brown moon came up over the hills, just as guess who walked in? You got it. The Greaser himself, along with Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee, all three of them decked out in sport coats, two-tone shoes, and slacks with knife-edged creases, their open-neck print shirts crisp and right out of the box. They sat at a front-row table and ordered long-neck beers and french-fried potatoes cooked in chicken fat. In less than two minutes, half the women in the place were jiggling and turning around in their chairs like they'd just been fed horse laxative. "What's he doing here?" Eddy Ray said. Duh, I thought. But all I said was, "He's probably just tagging along with Jerry Lee and Carl. Sure is a nice night, isn't it?" Then Kitty Lamar came back from the ladies' can, her eyes full of pure-blue innocence, as though she had no idea the Greaser was going to be there, and said, "Look, all the fellows from Sun Records are here.

Are you gonna introduce them, Eddy Ray?" Eddy Ray looked through the side window at the hills sparkling with snow, the sky black and bursting with stars. "I haven't given real thought to it," he said. "Maybe you should introduce them, Kitty Lamar. Maybe you could sing a duet. Or maybe even do a three- or a foursome." "How'd you like to get your face slapped?" she replied, chewing her gum, rolling her eyes. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Eddy Ray pulled the mic loose from the stand, kicking a lot of dirty electronic feedback into the speaker system, like fingernails raking down a blackboard. His cheeks were flushed with color that had the irregular shape of fire, his eyes dark in a way I had not seen them before. He asked Carl and Jerry Lee and the Greaser to stand up, then he paused, as though he couldn't find the proper words to say. The whole joint went quiet as a church house. I could feel sweat breaking on my forehead, because I knew the memories from the war that lived in Eddy Ray's dreams, and I'd always believed part of him died in that camp south of the Yalu.

Eddy Ray carried a stone bruise in his heart, and if he felt he had been betrayed by the people he loved, he was capable of doing bad things, maybe not to others, but certainly to Eddy Ray. It wasn't coincidence that he and Johnny Ace had been pals. Most Popular The floor lights on the stage were wrapped with amber- and-yellow cellophane, but they seemed to burn red circles into my eyes. Jerry Lee and Carl were starting to look uncomfortable, and the crowd was, too, like something really embarrassing was about to happen. "Say something!" Kitty Lamar whispered. But Eddy Ray just kept staring at the Greaser, like he was seeing his past or himself or maybe our whole generation before we went to war. "These guys are not only great musicians," Eddy Ray began, "they're three of the best guys I ever knew. It's an honor to have them here tonight. It's an honor to be their friend. They make me proud to be an American." I thought the yelling and table pounding from the crowd was going to blow the glass out of the windows.

In my lifetime I guess I've known every kind of person there is...brig rats, pimps, drug pushers, disc jockeys on the take, promoters who split for Vegas with the cashbox, and, my favorite bunch, scrubbed-down ministers who preach Jesus on Sunday and Wednesday night and the rest of the week screw teenage girls in their congregations. But none of them can hold a candle to a friend who stabs you in the back. That kind of person not only steals your faith in your fellow human beings, he makes you resent yourself. We had taken a break about 11:30 p.m., figuring to do one more set before we called it a night, and I hadn't seen the Greaser in the last hour or so. I glanced out the back window at a gazebo that was perched up on a little hill above a picnic area. I couldn't believe what I saw. Silhouetted against the moon, the Greaser and Kitty Lamar were both standing inside the gazebo, the Greaser bending down toward her so their foreheads were almost touching, her ta-tas standing up inside her cowboy shirt like the upturned noses on a pair of puppy dogs. I felt sick inside.

No, that doesn't describe it. I wanted to tear the Greaser apart and personally drive Kitty Lamar down to the bus depot and throw her on the first westbound to Big D and all points south. But that would have been easy compared to what I knew I had to do. I waited until he and I were alone, at breakfast the next day, in a restaurant with big windows that looked out on the Mississippi River. Eddy Ray was fanging down a plate of fried eggs, ham, grits, and toast and jam, hammering ketchup all over it, his face rested and happy. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below "I got to tell you something," I said. "It's not necessary. Eat up." "You don't even know what I'm gonna say." "You're worried about the Greaser. I had a talk with him last night. Kitty Lamar and him are just friends." "Yeah?" I said. "You got a hearing problem?" I stared out the window at a tug pushing a long barge piled with shale. The barge had gotten loose and was scraping against the pilings of the bridge.

The port side had tipped upward against a piling and gray mounds of shale were sliding through the starboard deck rail, sinking as rapidly as concrete in the current. "I saw her about five years back in a Port Arthur cathouse," I said. Eddy Ray studied the barge out on the river, chewing his food, his hair freshly barbered, razor-edged on the neck. "What were you doing there?" "I got a few character defects myself," I said. "Least I don't go around claiming to be something I'm not." "Kitty Lamar already told me about it. So quit fretting your mind and your bowels over other people's business. I swear, R. B., I think you own stock in an aspirin company." "I've heard her talking to him on the phone, Eddy Ray. They're taking you over the hurdles." This time he couldn't slip the punch, and I saw the light go out of his eyes. He cut a small piece of ham and put it in his mouth. "I guess that puts a different twist on it," he said. I hated myself for what I had just done. Could it get worse?

When we got back to the motel, the desk clerk told Eddy Ray to call the long-distance operator. "Nobody answered the phone in my room?" Eddy Ray said. "No, sir," the clerk said. Kitty Lamar was supposed to have met us in the diner but hadn't shown up. Evidently she hadn't hung around the room, either. Eddy Ray got the callback operator on the line and she connected him with our agent in Houston, a guy who for biblical example had probably modeled his life on Pontius Pilate's. As of that morning all our dates were canceled. "What gives, Leon?" Eddy Ray said into the receiver. He stood by the bed, puffing on a Lucky Strike while he listened, his back curved like a question mark. "Investigation? Into what? Listen to me, Leon, we didn't see anything, we don't know anything, we didn't do anything. I've got a total of thirty-seven dollars and forty cents to get us back to Houston. The air is showing through my tires. Are you listen" The line went dead. Eddy Ray removed the receiver from his ear, stared at it, and replaced it in the telephone cradle.

"Do you have to be bald-headed to get a Fuller Brush route?" he said. "Leon sold us out for another band?" I said. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below "He says some Houston cops want to question us about Johnny's death." "They wonder if we saw a certain guy in Johnny's dressing room." Then Eddy Ray mentioned the name of Cool Daddy Hopkins. I felt my mouth go dry, my stomach constrict, the kind of feeling I used to get when I'd hear the first sounds of smallarms fire, like strings of Chinese firecrackers popping. "We'll go to California. You know what they say: Nobody dies in Santa Barbara.' How far is Needles from Santa Barbara?" But it wasn't funny. We'd had it and we both knew it. Back then, disc jockeys took payola and people who got to the top were either humps for the Mafia or signed deals that left them with chump change. A black guy in Jennings, Louisiana, put out an R&B record that sold a million copies and netted him twenty-five dollars. Even the Greaser paid his manager 51 percent of his earnings.

Most Popular When you got in trouble with the wrong people, you took up bottleneck guitar on a street corner or punched out your eyes and joined the Five Blind Boys. In our case, the wrong people was Cool Daddy Hopkins, a six-foot-six mulatto who wore three-piece suits, a yellow fedora, and popped matches on his thumbnail to light his Picayune cigarettes. He not only carried a nickel-plated, pearl-handled derringer, he shot and killed a white man in Mississippi with it and wasn't lynched or even prosecuted. Northerners always thought the South was segregated. Wrong. Money was money, sex was sex, music was music, and color didn't have squat to do with any of it. Some people said Johnny Ace might have gotten in Cool Daddy's face one too many times. I didn't know if that was true or not. But when we got back from our gig in Arkansas, the Houston cops questioned us about Johnny and his relationship with Cool Daddy. Our names ended up on the front page of two Houston newspapers. In the world of R&B and rockabilly music, we had become the certifiable stink on shit.

Kitty Lamar and Eddy Ray had called it quits, even though you could tell neither one wanted to let go of the other. I wanted to blame the Greaser for busting them up, but I couldn't forget the fact it was me who told Eddy Ray that Kitty Lamar was probably bumping uglies behind his back. That's what I did for the guy who had carried me three hundred yards across a corrugated rice paddy while bullets from Chinese burp guns popped snow around his bootlaces. We played at a carnival up in Conroe and at a dance in Bandera and didn't clear enough to cover gas and hamburgers and the tire we blew out on a cattle guard. The boys in the band started to drift off one by one and join other groups. I couldn't blame them. We'd been jinxed six ways from breakfast ever since Johnny had died. Finally, Eddy Ray and I admitted defeat ourselves and got jobs as roughnecks on a drilling rig off Galveston Island.

One night, he wrote a song he called "The Oil Driller's Lament." We recorded it on a 45 rpm that cost us four dollars in a recording booth on the old Galveston amusement pier, with Eddy Ray singing and me backing him up on harmonica and Dobro. This is how it went: Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Ten days on, five days off, I guess my blood is crude oil now. Don't give your heart to a gin-fizz kitty From the backstreets of Texas City, 'Cause you won't ever lose Them mean ole roughnecking blues. It was a song about faded love and betrayal and honky-tonk angels and rolling down lost highways that led to jail, despair, and death. Some of the lyrics in it even scared me. It was sunset when we made the recording, and the sky was green, the breakers sliding through the pilings under the pier, the air smelling of salt and fried shrimp and raindrops that made rings in the swells. A lot of country singers fake the sadness in their songs, but when Eddy Ray sang this one, it was real and it broke my heart. "What you studying on?" he asked.

"I messed you up with Kitty Lamar," I said. He spun our four-dollar recording on his index finger, his face handsome and composed in the wind off the Gulf. "Kitty Lamar loved another guy. It ain't her fault. That's the way love is. It picks you, you don't pick it," he said. The sun was the dull red color of heated iron when it first comes out of the forge. I could feel the pier creak with the incoming tide and smell the salty bitterness of dried fish blood in the boards. I watched the sun setting on the horizon and the thunderheads gathering in the south, and I felt like the era we lived in and had always taken for granted was ending, but I couldn't explain why. "Hey, you and me whipped the Chinese army, R. B. They just haven't figured that out yet," he said. "There's worse things than being an oil-drilling man. I'm extremely copacetic on this." I mentioned to you that we were jinxed six ways from breakfast? The next morning, with no blowout preventer on the wellhead, our drill bit punched into a pay sand at a depth where nobody expected to find oil.

The pipe geysered out of the hole under thousands of pounds of pressure, clanging like a freight train through the superstructure. Then a spark jumped off a steel surface, and a torrent of flaming gas and oil ballooned through the derrick and melted the whole rig as though the spars were made of licorice. Eddy Ray and I sat on the deck of a rescue boat, hair singed, clothes peppered with burn holes, and watched the fire boil under the water. "Does Cool Daddy Hopkins still have his office in the Fifth Ward?" he said. Houston's black district was its own universe. There were bars and barbecue joints and shoeshine stands on almost every street corner. You could hear music from radios, jukeboxes, church houses, old black guys jamming under an oak tree. Dig this: In the black district there were no record stores. Both 78 and 45 rpm records were always sold at beauty and barbershops. The owners hung loudspeakers outside their businesses to advertise whatever new records had just come in, so all day long the street was filled with the sounds of Gatemouth Brown, LaVern Baker, and the Platters.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Cool Daddy Hopkins had his office in the back of a barbershop, where he sat in front of a big fan, a chili dog covered with melted cheese and a bottle of Mexican beer on his desk. Cool Daddy had gold skin with moles on it that looked like drops of mud that had been splashed on him from a passing car. His coat and vest hung on the back of a chair, along with a .32 derringer stuffed in a shoulder holster. His silk shirt was the color of tin, pools of sweat looped under his pits. He kept eating, sipping from his beer, his eyes never blinking while he listened to what Eddy Ray had to say. "So you think I'm the guy keeping you off the circuit?" he said. Most Popular "I'm not here to make accusations. I'm just laying it out for you, Cool Daddy. Johnny was my friend, but I don't know what happened in that dressing room," Eddy Ray said. "We told the cops that. Now we're telling you.

We're eighty-sixed and shit-canned all over the South." Cool Daddy reached into a cooler by his foot and slipped a beer out of ice that had been pounded and crushed in a cloth bag with a rolling pin. He made a ring with his thumb and index finger and wiped the ice off the bottle onto the floor. There were a couple of glasses turned top down on a shelf above his head. I thought he was going to offer us a beer to split. Instead, he cracked off the cap with a bottle opener and drank from the neck. "Johnny and me was both in the United States Navy, ammunition loaders, can you dig that?" he said. "You know who was loading right next to me? Harry Belafonte. That's no jive, man." But Eddy Ray wasn't listening. "Our agent says he doesn't want trouble with you. So if you're not the problem, why is Leon telling us that?" Eddy Ray said. The sunlight through the window seemed to grow warmer, more harsh in spite of the fan, the air suddenly close and full of dust particles and the smell of hair tonic from the shop up front. " 'Cause Leon is like most crackers.

If he ain't got a colored man to blame for his grief, he got to look in the mirror and put it on his own sorry-ass self." Eddy Ray leaned forward and stuck an unlit Lucky Strike in his mouth, fishing in his jeans for a match. His hair was uncut, wet, and combed straight back, curly on the back of his neck. "Give us another R&B gig." "The train went through the station and you ain't caught it, man," Cool Daddy said. "Wish it'd been different, but it ain't." Eddy Ray found a book of matches but lost his concentration and put them away. He took the Lucky Strike out of his mouth and brushed at his nose with the back of his wrist. "I'll put it another way. If you cain't see your way to hep us, just stay the hell out of our sandbox," he said. "You still don't get it, do you?" Cool Daddy replied, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below "Get what?" "I ain't the power in this game. Who you think screwed you on the circuit, boy?

Who got that kind of power?" Eddy Ray's eyes blinked, but not in time to hide the glow of recognition in them. "Yeah, that's right," Cool Daddy said. "The word is your lady friend been badmouthing you with certain people at Sun Record Company. The word is they don't like you, motherfucker, particularly a certain boy from Mis'sippi don't like you." Cool Daddy pinched his temples like he was struggling not to hurt the feelings of dumb white people such as ourselves. "Let me strap it on you, boy. I thought maybe she was leaking info about me to the cops, so I had a detective get ahold of her phone records." Then he mentioned the name of a powerful man he said Kitty Lamar had phoned repeatedly at Sun Records. "I don't know what you done to her, but she fixed yo' ass good." The only sound in the room was the vibration of the electric fan. Eddy Ray's eyes looked like brown pools that someone had filled with black silt. "He was lying," I said when we were outside. "You're the one who told me Kitty Lamar was a Judas. You cain't have it both ways, R.

B." "I'm going out west," I said. We were in traffic, headed toward Eddy Ray's house in the Heights section of north Houston, oak trees sweeping by us on wide boulevards where termite-eaten nineteenth-century houses with wide galleries sat gray and hot looking in the shade. I couldn't believe what I'd just said and the implication it had for my friendship with Eddy Ray. He finally lit the cigarette he'd been fiddling with since Cool Daddy's office. "Am I invited?" he asked. "Nobody can help you, Eddy Ray. You don't think you should have survived the war, and I think you're aiming to take both of us down." "Sorry to hear you say that." He flipped the dead paper match into the traffic. I got out of the Hudson at the red light and went into the first bar I could find. Lone Star and Jax beer might seem like poor solace for busted careers and lost friendships, but I figured if I drank enough of it, it would have to count for something. And that's exactly what I did, full tilt, for the next six months.

I picked watermelons in the Rio Grande Valley and rode a freight train west and cut lettuce in El Centro. I played Dobro for tips in bars on East Fifth Street in Los Angeles, followed the wheat harvest all the way to Saskatoon, and ended up on Larimer Street in Denver, where I met Cisco Houston and played as a guest on his syndicated radio show right before he got blacklisted. I saw the country from the bottom side up. I may have married a three-hundred-pound Indian woman on the Southern Ute Reservation, but I can't be sure, because by the time I sobered up from all the peyote buttons I'd eaten, I was in an uncoupled boxcar full of terrified illegal farmworkers, roaring at eighty miles an hour down Raton Pass into New Mexico. And that's what led me to one of those moments in life when you finally figure out there are no answers to the big mysteries, like why the innocent suffer, why there's disease and war and all that kind of stuff. I also figured out that what we call our destiny is usually decided by two or three casual decisions, which on the surface usually seem about as important as spitting your gum through a sewer grate.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below I crawled off the boxcar at the bottom of the grade in Raton when the sun broke above the crest of the hills and the entire countryside looked soaked in blood, the arroyos deep in shadow, the cones of dead volcanoes stark and biscuit colored against the sky. I could smell pinion trees, wet sage, wood smoke, cattle in the pastures, and creek water that had melted from snow. I could smell the way the country probably was when it was only a dream in the mind of God. I found a bar by the railway tracks but didn't go in. Instead, I walked down to a café built out of stucco, networked with heat cracks, where a bunch of Mexican gandy dancers were eating breakfast. I had one dollar and seven cents in my pocket, enough to order scrambled eggs, a pork-sausage patty, fried spuds, and coffee, and to leave a dime tip. Most Popular While I sipped coffee, I thumbed through a three-day-old copy of an Albuquerque newspaper. On an inside page was a story about none other than the Greaser.

I had read enough stories about the Greaser's career to last me a lifetime, but in the third paragraph was a statement that was like a thumbtack in the eye. According to the reporter, the Greaser had left Sun Records at least a year ago and had signed a managerial deal with a guy who used to be a carnival barker. "You okay, hon?" the waitress said to me. She was a big redheaded woman, with upper arms like cured hams and perfume you could probably smell all the way to Flagstaff. "Me? I'm fine. Except for the fact that I'm probably the dumbest sonofabitch who ever walked into your café," I said. "No, that was my ex-husband. There's some showers for truck drivers in back. It's on the house," she said. She winked at me. "Hang around, cowboy." Life on the underside of America could have its moments. Five days later, I climbed down from the cab of a tractor trailer and walked four blocks through a run-down, tree-shaded neighborhood to Eddy Ray's house.

He had scraped up a pile of black leaves and moldy pecan husks in his side yard and was burning them in an oil drum, his eyes watering in the smoke. I dropped my duffel bag on the gallery and sat down in the glider and waited for him to say hello. "It's me, in case you haven't noticed the man sitting about ten feet to your rear," I said. "I got your postcard from the Big Horn County Jail," he said, fanning smoke out of his face. I didn't remember writing a card from jail, but that wasn't unusual then. "Remember when I told you Cool Daddy Hopkins was lying about Kitty Lamar?" I asked. "I do." "Know why you wouldn't believe me?" I said. "Not interested." " 'Cause Cool Daddy fooled me, too. I thought Kitty Lamar had stuck it to us. Know why I thought that?" He leaned on a rake handle, shutting his eyes, maybe hoping I'd be gone when he opened them again. " 'Cause I had a grudge against her from the first time we heard her sing," I said, answering my own question.

" 'Cause I didn't want her coming between us." I let my eyes slip off his face. He picked up a huge sheaf of compacted leaves and dropped them into the flames. Thick curds of yellow smoke curled into the tree limbs overhead. "So what's changed?" "When Cool Daddy told us Kitty Lamar had been bad-mouthing us at Sun Records, the Greaser had already been gone from Sun. Kitty Lamar didn't know anybody at Sun. The only person she knew there was the Greaser. Besides, why would people at the record company want to hurt us? Sun doesn't do business like that." "You're sure about this?" "I read it in the newspaper. Then I called the reference lady at the public library to check it out. The Greaser has been managed by this carnival barker or freak-show manager or whatever he is for the last year." Eddy Ray sat down on the steps, his back to me. His face and arms were bladed with the sunlight shining through the trees. He rubbed the back of his neck, like a terrible memory was eating its way through his skull. "What's wrong?" I said. "The Greaser called up and asked me to send him a demo.

He said he'd take it to a studio for us. He said he'd always thought my voice was as good as Johnny Ace's." "What'd you do?" I said. "Told him he was a hypocrite and a liar and to lose my phone number." At least I wasn't the only one in the band with a serious thinking disorder. "Seen Kitty Lamar?" I said. "I heard she was singing in a lounge in Victoria." I pushed the glider back and forth, the chains creaking, the worn-out heels of my cowboy boots dragging on the boards. "I'm not gonna do it," he said, looking straight ahead at the yard. "What you're thinking. She can ring or come by if she wants to, but I ain't running after her. Will you stop playing on that glider? You're giving me a migraine." "You got that 45 rpm we recorded on the amusement pier in Galveston?" "What about it?" "I paid half of the four dollars it cost to make it. I want to take my half to Victoria and let Kitty Lamar hear it.

Then I'm going to send my half to the Greaser." I said that to piss him off good, which sometimes was the only way you got Eddy Ray outside of his own head. He went inside the house and came back out with the 45. It was wrapped in soft tissue and taped around the edges, and I knew that Eddy Ray hadn't given up his music. "Does Kitty Lamar still paint her toenails?" I asked. "Why?"

Question: Where did Johnny Ace die in 1954?
Answer: Houston, Texas